Co-published by LE BAL and MACK on the occasion of the exhibition,the book SCENE of the Italian photographer Alex Majoli brings together the emblematic images of the series produced over more than eight years.
Sorted by geographical area, the images are accompanied by two texts never published before: The Theater of Life according to Alex Majoli by David Campany and Déphotographier by Corinne Rondeau.
This large format book with a detachable cover is available in French or English. The series alternates between full pages and small images whose darkness is enhanced by a selective varnish.
Co-published by LE BAL and MACK
With the support of the Italian Cultural Institute
To find here https://www.lebalbooks.com/editions-du-bal/408-alex-majoli-scene.html
Excerpt from the unpublished text by David Campany, Alex Majoli’s Theater of Life
“In everyday life as in images, we never see people or situations
“As they are”; we only see the light they reflect, but the nature of this light affects how we will receive, interpret, and understand what is before us. Although light has no significance of its own, it is an inexhaustible source of possible meanings, themselves evolving over time, according to pictorial conventions. These conventions are omnipresent, from reporting to advertising through cinema, painting and theater. We learn what type of light is “appropriate” for a photo ID, a wedding photo, a crime scene photo, a news photo, a war photo, a royal portrait, etc. It is because the light has no intrinsic meaning that the pictorial conventions are so pregnant. These apply ad infinitum to our entire visual culture, giving the impression that there is a natural correspondence between a given subject and its mode of representation. Inflecting or deflecting these conventions, experiencing the representation of the subject in unexpected light can be both disturbing and revealing. Disturbing, because the usual code is missing; revealing, because it can provoke new thoughts about the world, its representation and the essential role of light.
Alex Majoli uses a very powerful flash light, both instantaneous and much more intense than natural light. This flash illuminates what is nearby, but plunges the surroundings in the dark or in a moonlight. Whatever the intensity of light that existed, everything seems to happen now at dusk, after sunset. Now, at the very moment when the world should fall asleep, it offers itself to us, in these images, in a magnified form. ”
